Awesome Shopping!!

susiestar

Roll With It
No one can figure out why my pain doctor wanted to do just one knee at a time, but the doctor I am now seeing kept it that way. There was a scheduling hiccup in which I was told my appts were ALL on Friday, but after the first knee they changed to Thurs. Even on the reminder call I was told it was on Friday. So I went on Fri and didn't get the shot. I could have pushed, but they are just swamped and are working hard to take care of all of my pain doctor's patients. (For those who don't remember, my pain doctor just suddenly decided he wasn't ever coming back right before Christmas. I got a call on the 22nd about it!)

J and I had gone to the city early to pick up some bakery items that Wiz and my mom wanted. We had a few min to kill before when we thought my appointment was, so I popped into Michael's to pick up a specific item. We found grab bags for two bucks each and I got four. We opened them in the car and were SHOCKED at what was in them. Baskets of all sizes, notebooks, erasers (cute mary engelbreit ones!), paper and plastic takeout food boxes that sold for two dollars on sale or four new, all sorts of things. Since we didn't go to the doctor, we went back. I ended up buying ten more grab bags.

I got more stuff than I could have DREAMED of. Two scrapbook albums that are beautiful and take 14 by 14 inch pages, a pack of 50 pages of paper with candy can stripes around the edges and 2 smaller books to hold 4x6 photos were in ONE grab bag. I got a penguin ornament I wanted to buy for thank you before Xmas but it was sixteen bucks, and a garland with big buttons that I wanted that also was nutso expensive. I got some cute little things that we left with my mom for my niece, incl matching headbands to share with her bff. I don't get to give her gifts so I leave things at my mom's house for her housecleaner;s grandkids. Mom makes sure niece gets first pick As her housecleaner is a total sweetie, I leave things for her kids too.

I got six packs of the expensive cards you put photos in, three dozen glitter stickers - the ones wtih rhinestones arranged in a pattern like mittens or pumpkins or whatever. SOOOOOO much more.

Jess went through everything and wrote down what it was and how much retail price was. At the halfway point it was over $300 worth of stuff and all I paid was $28 plus tax! I haven't seen her final total, but I won't be shocked if it is around $700.

Have any of you been to any of the $1 Jewelry stores? We have one in town here and a different named one in the city by the Michaels I like. I have been impressed by what I have found there. Not so much that the jewelry is high quality, though for what you pay it is very good quality. I needed some seed beads for a project and got a $1 necklace and earring set (all for $1, as most necklaces have a pair of earrings with them included in the price) that had just the right color. Unlike the ones I buy at craft or cross stitch stores, I have had very few that I could not get a needle through. They come strung on fishing line, so they have to be a certain size on the inside diameter.

The one in the city also sells bags of broken jewelry. A snack size ziploc is two bucks and a sandwich size is five bucks. The lady working didn't have many bags made up, but she let us fill our own from two shoe box size plastic bins of broken jewelry. We got AMAZING stuff. I am acquiring beads to use for a Christmas shirt project for J and my one little cousin, and some of these will be wonderful for that. J is working on making jewelry, and has a great stash for a ton less than she could otherwise purchase. Plus we had a TON of fun!

Outings to places like this have shown me that while she digs holes for herself on some issues, she is working super hard to earn our trust on the stealing issue. She was careful to let me know that she didn't have pockets or that if she did her pockets were empty before we went into anyplace and before we walked out of anywhere. She has no come up with anything we didn't know about either, which is huge progress. The one time thank you was going to give her something he bought fo her xmas gift and lost, she aske him to do it in front of me so there were no mixups. Taking steps like that doesn't end the suspicions, but it does help quite a bit. I think she is afraid I won't ever take her into another store again if she is caught stealing while she is with me even one more time. And she is right, because that is exactly what will happen.

All in all, it was a great, and fun, shopping week! What are your best bargains lately? Oh, I also got a wonderful 100% cashmere scarf in the mail - I got it for just fifteen bucks online!! It is far better quality than I thought it would be, and had a price tag from a major dept store at 99 bucks!!
 

Mattsmom277

Active Member
Wow, that is amazing shopping! I haven't found anything that good for a long time. I haven't actually been shopping for anything other than staples lately. With S/O out of work, we are on a needs only budget. I have been finding good grocery bargains though which have been feeding my savings itch. I love bargains!! I came home one day with 4 boxes (packages of 3) of organic popcorn. From $3 something a box, down to $0.69 each. A massive can of coffee that was regular $10.99 for $3.99

I think the best non food deals recently were probably easy child's clothes items she picked up during after Christmas sales with money she received as gifts. She spent all together maybe a hundred dollars. She ended up with a gorgeous ladies dress blouse, two pairs of dress slacks, a dress blazer, two dressy sweaters, two women's bow ties and some new pj's. They were on blow out racks at one of the better stores in town. Regular price was probably around $500+ . She was thrilled.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Best bargains lately..........and this shows how exciting my life has been lately..........were at krogers. Yup, there it is. LOL Well, and the local market.

I got Freshlike veggies for .49 cents a can (and it is this week too by the way), which is cheaper than aldi's, also got my kraft bbq sauce for the same price......lots of other things, too many to write them all down. let's just say easy child and I had major issues fitting it into the car. It was a stock up sale for sure.

Then we found beef chuck roast (angus) on sale for less than 3.59 lb at the local marker which beat Kroger's price. I picked up 6, easy child picked up 6, then Nichole spotted some cheaper than that at her kroger in the manager's special spot and grabbed 7............and we canned beef today because I have no more room in either freezer. After tasted said canned beef......I'm not so sure I'll be freezing so much in the future. omg it was HEAVEN! Not to mention my house smells lovely.

Since my freezers are full.......the sales have got to be awesome per meat because I have to buy in bulk to either can it or dehydrate it. But at least I can still get it at a great price. :)

Susie that is awesome! We're going to that GW outlet thing again next week........I wonder what we'll find this time around........
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I hardly ever buy beef anymore but not long ago I actually bought prime rib that they put on sale after new year. I got two of them for about 10 bucks a piece. And they were large!

Oh Susie, I almost had to close my eyes reading about beads. All Buck talks about is making his "Indian necklaces" and stuff. He uses this thing he calls a big eye needle to string his beads. He has more beads. He swears all his beads are real whatever stones. Yeah okay.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Janet, ugh on Buck. I have always had a love affair with beads and buttons but about five or six years ago my kids wanted to use them for some project and they completely disappeared. I couldn't even find out if they took them to school or some other kid's house or what. I am talking about a twenty year collection. I was so mad I was almost levitating. I won't let my kids take my beads or buttons out of my sight anymore. I have been slowly rebuilding but just haven't seen many good deals on them,so I haven't really started to acquire them again. Now I am because I have several projects. I am very picky about what bead I use for what project. I have been really pleased with these from the dollar jewelry stores because with seed beads it is often really really hard to get a needle through them but with these it is almost guaranteed a fine tapestry or beading needle will fit through them. I stopped buying the czech glass beads at Hobby Lobby because I cannot put more than half of them on a string because they are too small on the inside hole. This is using a the finest beading needle I can find.

Lisa, I had to turn down a bunch of meat deals at Sams because we have so much in the freezer. I finally got husband to understand that if he buys meat at the reg price I will skin him alive and make him give me double the amt of cash then and there. If I don't? We can have twenty pounds of whatever type of meat he wants to use and eh will go buy fresh at the store at the reg price (not even LOOKING to see if there is a sale!) because it is 'too much hassle' to thaw a pkg of meat. I had a huge fit the last time he did this and it seemed to make an impact.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Janet, ugh on Buck. I have always had a love affair with beads and buttons but about five or six years ago my kids wanted to use them for some project and they completely disappeared. I couldn't even find out if they took them to school or some other kid's house or what. I am talking about a twenty year collection. I was so mad I was almost levitating. I won't let my kids take my beads or buttons out of my sight anymore. I have been slowly rebuilding but just haven't seen many good deals on them,so I haven't really started to acquire them again. Now I am because I have several projects. I am very picky about what bead I use for what project. I have been really pleased with these from the dollar jewelry stores because with seed beads it is often really really hard to get a needle through them but with these it is almost guaranteed a fine tapestry or beading needle will fit through them. I stopped buying the czech glass beads at Hobby Lobby because I cannot put more than half of them on a string because they are too small on the inside hole. This is using a the finest beading needle I can find.

Lisa, I had to turn down a bunch of meat deals at Sams because we have so much in the freezer. I finally got husband to understand that if he buys meat at the reg price I will skin him alive and make him give me double the amt of cash then and there. If I don't? We can have twenty pounds of whatever type of meat he wants to use and eh will go buy fresh at the store at the reg price (not even LOOKING to see if there is a sale!) because it is 'too much hassle' to thaw a pkg of meat. I had a huge fit the last time he did this and it seemed to make an impact.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I literally have thousands of beads.........seed beads........expensive beads......probably a couple thousand dollars worth still on the hanks. I used to do extensive bead work projects. Because of that, I was a bead addict for quite a long while. Nor can I bring myself to get rid of them either. Not even to sell them. I may yet get back into beading, especially now that there are no little kids running around the house. And who knows, one of the grands might decide one day they'd like to dance.....and Nana will do their beadwork for them. lol

I don't pay full price for meat. I think I'd pass out if I did and those prices are still climbing.....and predicted to get much worse. Which is why I hate hate hate passing on a awesome deal just because my freezers are full. I still buy meat the way I've always bought it, in bulk, but there is just Travis and I now and try as we might we can only eat it so fast. So I've had to look into other options.

I wondered how difficult canning the meat would be.....but actually it's not the least bit hard. And of course we do it like we can other things.....everyone buys a huge portion and we can it all together and split up the results evenly. Makes it easier, especially when learning but it wouldn't be hard to do it alone either.

I got two dehydrators for xmas, one electric and one non electric, and I can't wait to try them out too as dehydrating the meat makes it last just about forever if you store it properly. I'll be using them with fresh produce too as I get so irritated buying it super cheap on sale and then having part of it go bad before we can eat it all.

I've got to rotate through the meat in the freezers.......canning the meat will let me keep doing that, then I'll be able to add to it again. :)
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Canning is one thing I won't do. I spent time helping my aunt can and it was the most miserable thing I ever did at her house. I don't deal well with being hot, and canning is hot work. I might buy another freezer though. husband always wants chest freezers. Not me. I won on the one we have now, mostly because I was preg and it was my birthday gift. I told him if we got a chest freezer he would come home to everything thawing and all he would see were my feet sticking up out of the freezer because I fell in and couldn't get out.

He laughed so hard he actually fell out of his chair at the restaurant we were having dinner at. It is one of my fondest early relationship memories because it was so funny to both of us.

But being just five feet tall, chest freezers can be dangerous ya know. Or at the least, they would be hard to get out of!
 

HaoZi

CD Hall of Fame
Awesome deals ladies! Thanks for the heads-up on the BBQ sauce, too, hope our Kroger's has some left by the time I get there tomorrow. Likely not, but I can hope, I need some Honey BBQ for my Superbowl sauce.
 

1905

Well-Known Member
OMG! I went to Michaels and got 4 $2 grab bags, here is what was in ONE of them....a box of NFL Eagles Chrismas cards, a box of MLB Philiies Cristmas cards, a huge Eagles banner (bunting style), a white Lenox- style(called Lemax) ceramic Santa wearing a Phillies hat, it's about 8 inches tall in the box and it lights up! and to top it off an Eagles fly swatter. Another bag had all stationary, exactly how you described it, journals, cards, recipe cards, notebooks. Another bag had Christmas craft kits from fun foam....my students at school will love all this next year. There were also ormnaments of every kind. One said $6.99, there was also a nutcracker in this bag. My last bad was full of lipgloss literally 42 lip glosses, I will make up little Valentines gifts for my students...lipgloss and notecards for all! I also saw some other bags with great stuff..but that was it for me,

When I came home husband wanted to see the reciept, he didn't believe that it was $8. I really went there to buy a cake pan in a heart shape to make husband a cake on V-Day. They only had a small one and I used a coupon. Next door is Old Navy, my friend bought clothes there for $2.97, but I didn't see anything in my size for that price, lot's of size 8's and 10's FYI. I did buy easy child 2 sweaters for $4 each, originally 29.99. Also I found difficult child some camo style t's for 3 something, I got him 4.

Now I have a pile of **** on my kitchen floor, I better go clean it up!
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I still have no idea what a big eye needle is...lol. Buck does make some interesting pieces but he makes them too small for any ordinary person and when I pointed that out he said that Indians wore them like chokers and they would tie them off with leather bands in the back. I just shrugged. I thought he was stupid because if he wanted to sell them to anyone else they would need to be longer and have a clasp in the back. The only clasps he was willing to put on them were the magnetic type and I expressed my opinion that I didnt think those were the best type because they could be lost so easily. I would really want a lobster claw on any necklace I purchased. I mean the idiot gave McKenzie a sample necklace he had made that was only 10 inches long and had the magnetic clasp. Did he really think she wouldnt snatch that thing off and break it and then eat the beads?

I told him point blank not to give any of the kids a necklace just for that reason but he didnt listen to me. When I found out he gave it to McKenzie I lit into him. Then he stood in my living room and started talking about making ones for Jamies kids and I stood up and put my finger in his face and told him flat out NO! First of all, Mikey is a boy and he doesnt need a necklace and he would break it in 15 seconds flat and eat it and Hailie would do the same thing. Jamie did say to just send one to his wife, she would like it. he never did.
 
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